The SES China Keynote speakers included Johnny Chou of Google and Jack Ma of Yahoo / Alibaba. Jack Ma I would have to say was one of the most memorable speakers. The way he just rolled up on the SES stage and confidently patted Chris Sherman on the shoulder, then spread himself out in his sofa chair as an entourage of 40+ journalists began to snap pictures away. Moments into the interview (and this has got to be staged and was absolutely brillant) so lowly servant of Jack walks up on stage with a cup of tea on a saucer and serves Jack but doesn’t serve Chris! My Chinese wasn’t advanced enough to understand all of what he said but the translators provided some great clues into his vision for Yahoo. Bottom line though – Jack Ma was the key event at SES China. I was dissapointed that Bai Du was not present – MSN, Google and Yahoo basically split the stage throughout the day.

SES China Google Dance Party.

As with every SES conference I managed to sneak into the Google dance party – this one was a little lame though. Although they served beer and wine, the food was on the real weak side. Just peanuts and frosty Chinese cake. 1/4 of the conference room was dedicated to slick flatscreen tvs and laptop monitors where you can sign up for Google adwords. Many sales and staff were around to annoy you with upselling Google. Then the music started and they encouraged us to dance. Basically it was a spooky cult kind of feeling and I was a little drunk and ready to take off.

SES China Nanjing Food.

I eventually took off with Zafrul, Marc and one other guy I forget sorry to look for some good local food over at Xin Jie Kou ( kind of like the Wang Fu Jing I would imagine of Nanjing). We finally found the food court below just in time to watch 80% of the food vendors close shop. Damn. Did get a chance to get a bowl of Dan Dan Mian which was very good. The noodles were hand made in the shop and cooked to al dente perfection. Wish I could take this stuff home.